Debate on freedom of expression in the Netherlands

Geert Wilders, head of the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV, far-right) has triggered a debate in the Netherlands around wheter or not to broadcast his anti-muslim film. "Constitutional law is supposed to draw borders between what is right and what is wrong in normal human behaviour", writes Christopher Caldwell. "Staged provocations intended to shift such boundaries are sometimes acts of bad faith. ... No right is unimaginable and no tradition too venerable to be revisited. Such cases are artificial, but the law they make is real. Mr Wilders is something of a bogeyman in polite Dutch society now. He should not be. His perfectly legal effort resembles the kind of mischievous testing of boundaries that civil libertarians have engaged in whenever they have sought to hasten social change in the face of an indifferent or hostile electorate."

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